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Sex ed can save money, lives

Posted: March 26, 2011 - 8:33pm

Regardless of what you believe morally or religiously, there is cost associated with not having comprehensive sex education. Teen pregnancy rates are higher in counties with abstinence-only sex education.

Teen pregnancy costs Beaufort County plenty — about $5.9 million annually in lost tax revenue, public assistance, and incarceration of the sons of teen mothers, according to a recent report.

Statewide, taxpayers spent about $80 million on Medicaid costs associated with teen pregnancy in 2006. Teenage mothers are less likely to finish high school and more likely to live in poverty and rely on public assistance, according to the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teenage Pregnancy.

Young people are also in the highest-risk age group for contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Teen pregnancy is on the rise in Beaufort County, even as it’s on the decline in the state and nation.

Many teenagers are waiting to have sex until they are older and/or married. About a third of South Carolina high school seniors chose abstinence in 2009. “Safer Choices” is a course for high school freshmen and sophomores approved Wednesday by a committee, but still pending the school board’s approval. It stresses that abstinence is the only 100-percent sure way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Safer Choices offers teens powerful tools to resist peer pressure and to wait to have sex until they are married, older, and/or ready. Those tools are important, because peer pressure starts younger than any of us adults would like to think.

More than half of high school seniors are sexually active. Without protection, our teens are getting pregnant and they are getting sick. Safer Choices teaches these students how to protect themselves from pregnancy and STDs.

Pediatricians say that TV, movies and videos are telling teens that everyone is having sex, and doing so without consequences. Young people deserve accurate information from parents and schools so they can make safer choices. Comprehensive lessons in reproductive health are a wise investment.

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